Monday, November 1, 2010

Maleficent

Every year at work we have a Halloween party, complete with costume and pumpkin carving contests. This year I was the defending champion of both, and I knew there was no way I could beat the awesomeness from last year. Really, how does it get any better than a Death Star pumpkin or a Yoshi costume (from Nintendo's Mario games). It just doesn't. Last year was so amazing that there was no beating it, but I still had to try, and this time Mary would be at work with me so my group costume would actually make sense. We decided to go with a Sleeping Beauty theme this year. I never liked that movie much when I was little, but Mary's favorite Disney princess is Aurora, Maleficent is an amazing villain, and it gave me an excuse to chase Mary around with my drop spindle while cursing her to die... how could I pass up an opportunity like that???

Now, this isn't something I'd normally put into writing for all the world to see, but I feel like it needs to be said. My mom is freaking amazing. She's made my Halloween costume just about every year and they're always brilliant. My co-workers are still in awe over her mad sewing skills from Yoshi. This year she pulled out all the stops. We were under a time crunch because life got in the way and then she got a cold - one of those really nasty headcolds with crappy sinus pressure and all you really want is a head transplant. I have no idea how she managed to keep sewing with all that going on, but she did it. And my costume was amazing. Don't believe me? Take a look for yourself:

Amazing doesn't even begin to cover it, right? Not only did she completely rock my costume, but I talked her into altering Mary's Princess Peach costume from last year to Aurora for this year. Originally the plan was to just change the skirt flap thing, add something for a stand-up collar, and add sleeves. Easy peasy, right? Mom took it like a million steps further. She completely redid the bodice and took poofyness out of the skirt. I swear this woman used magic. I have no idea how the hell she did what she did but the result was once again amazing.

We won Best Group Costumes at the contest at work. I probably don't need to point out that there weren't any groups competing, but that's not the point. We were the talk of the party. It was great. I didn't think Maleficent would ever beat Yoshi, but I think she did. She's evil and amazing and I loved being her for a day. This costume is definitely going to be a repeat in years to come. I love it!

Oh, and just to show off last year's awesomeness... Here I am as Yoshi. Might as well include the rest of the Mario gang while I'm at it. Mary is Princess Peach, her husband is Mario, and his best friend is Wario. I won "most creative" in the work contest last year, and we placed second place in a local pub's contest as a group. It was great!

Halloween is tied with Christmas for my favorite holiday. It's that one day out of the year I get to fully embrace my crafty geekyness and show it proudly for all the world to see, without coming off as a crazy person. Ok, they still look at me like I'm nuts, but there's usually a certain amount of respect there to because it seems like everyone, at some point in their lives, has worn a Halloween costume and/or carved a jack-o-lantern. This is different than anything yarn related because really, only knitters and crocheters seem to understand the siren call of a yarn store and the insanity behind spending *hours* knitting $20 socks that you could go buy at a department store for like $2. Granted, I've never knit a pair of socks, but I understand the desire to do so and hope to finish a pair one day. Anyway, the point is that the general public appreciates the hard work that goes into a home-made Halloween costume, especially one as awesome as the ones my mom has made for me through the years. They also appreciate the difference between whacking at a pumpkin with a dull knife and meticulously following a complicated pattern with itty bitty saws. They might still think it's crazy spending that much time on something that only gets used once in the year, but they also appreciate how much cooler it is than running to the local party store and picking up a costume that everyone else is wearing.

That being said, I still have a tendency to go overboard when it comes to pumpkins. Last year I carved 6 pumpkins. Seriously. And they were awesome. Death Star, Captain Jack Sparrow, Hannibal King, fireman, Monster, and a tiki. Knowing that it wasn't ever going to get better than the Death Star, and that I just didn't have time to carve a million of them again, I stuck with my favorite things from 2010. Embracing my Slytherin geekyness and my crocheted Mad Hatter. The Mad Hatter pumpkin was a stencil from zombiepumpkins.com and it has a projected shadow of the Cheshire Cat on the back.

My Slytherin crest pumpkin was a design I came up with based on images of the crest I was able to find online. I'd love to carve all the house crests one year, and I'm already working on the patterns. Might even post 'em on my blog if people are interested.

I hope everyone had a very happy Halloween! I'm already brainstorming for next year...